24 Sep 2014

The outgoing Gaborone City mayor, Mr Haskins Nkaigwa has decried what he called  appalling and challenging health status of the city and called for the immediate placement of prudent and mitigating measures.

Addressing a full council meeting on Monday, September 21, Mr Nkaigwa called on the central government to increase the number of doctors and nurses in all health facilities as most of them have insufficient medication and staff. 

The move, he said would help in reducing the waiting time by patients, noting that Princess Marina Referral Hospital was no longer coping with the increased demand from the community as patients could be found sleeping on the floors. 

In addition, he said, patients also had to wait in long queues for more than three hours to receive help. However, he noted, as a measure to address some of these problems, government should increase the number of clinics operating 24 hours in each and every constituency.

He reasoned that Bontleng, Extension 14, Sebele, Block 8, Block 6 and Broadhurst clinics should all be operated on a 24 hour basis. Above all, he said, government should consider a second referral hospital in the city as the population could no longer be serviced by one hospital.

On a different matter, Mr Nkaigwa told the meeting that GCC continued to incur huge legal fees over matters that could have been dealt with without taking their various stakeholders to court.

 “We have a mandate to engage our stakeholders in all of our dealings. Rushing to the courts is not serving us any purpose as the huge legal fees we continue to incur could be used for other service delivery priorities,” he said. ENDS